Tommy Come Back

Bambi was bored and frustrated with the direction her life had taken. She worked a dead-end, go-nowhere job, and her husband TJ was cheating on her again. She decided one October evening that it would be a good idea to try and summon the dead. If in that act, she could fix one thing, then maybe she could fix everything else.  

She couldn’t say how to do it, but she knew that the internet would know.

TJ said he was fishing with Charlie and wouldn’t be home until tomorrow night. But Bambi knew he was at the Motel 6 on Turner Avenue with Casey. Casey was his side piece, mistress, whatever. She knew he was there because she had driven by it an hour ago on her way to pick up ketchup and curly fries at Kroger and had seen his and Casey’s cars. That idiot wasn’t even smart enough to park around the back. What a winner I picked for myself, she thought. 

Some days, Bambi wished he would just leave her so she could get a lawyer and lay claim to half of what little they owned. But he never did leave, and she suspected he never would. She wasn’t sure if it was love or just habit that kept him coming back home to her. Sooner or later, he would confess his sins to her, cry and ask for forgiveness, promising to never cheat again. And he would mean it when he said it, and she would take him back, each time believing him less and less, as if they were acting out a Greek tragedy. Everything was foretold, but nothing could be changed. It was the dance they did. And even though it had gotten tired and old, it was the only dance they knew. And they kept on doing it, at least until something could be different.

Bambi knew who she wanted to summon. Tommy Green. She’d wanted to talk to him for so long, but the will or words never materialized. And now, with TJ checked out, she had some of the why in front of her. The other part was still complicated. It was a longing, a loss that wouldn’t subside even across the years. Instead, this wound seemed to fester and ooze with time, to crack open and bleed anew. 

She would summon Tommy. And as she made the decision in her mind, a cruel, cringy rhyme about him came flooding back to her. Tommy Green, age 18, body like you’ve never seen. Tommy Green, age 18, Daddy gone and Momma mean, left for dead in gasoline. Tommy Green, did the burning wipe you clean? 

Bambi had always hated that song about Tommy and hated the kids who made it up so easily after his death, and now she couldn’t get it out of her head. Tommy had been beautiful, and his mother had been awful to him. Bambi felt sure his mother hadn’t killed him, but with his body being burned, she had no certainty. It was an unsolved murder grown cold with time. 

His funeral was closed casket. They said when his family saw him at the morgue, they left looking completely haunted. There was no real closure for her. She still missed him now, and even though it had only been seven years since his death, it seemed like everyone else in this town had moved on from it.  

Seven years since high school graduation, since the best years of their lives had ended.  Bambi thought something more to life should have happened since then. She felt like she was living in a prologue waiting for the main story of her life to begin. 

* * *

Bambi was a cashier at the Shop and Stop, a Walmart knockoff with less class, working the 7–4 shift. TJ worked there, too, in the automotive section. He was an expert on batteries and brakes. It was in the Shop and Stop break room where they began their relationship, flirting over bagged lunches. They had known each other in high school, but they’d hung out with different crowds. TJ was a jock, Bambi a Goth. TJ was supposed to go to college on a football scholarship, but a knee injury sidelined him. Bambi had planned to go to college too, but her father had gambled away her savings. TJ and Bambi had come together because it was convenient and because it was cheaper to live together than alone. And that was that. Now here she was, cashiering her life away, married to a man who cheated. 

The last truly good time that Bambi could remember was before Tommy died. She wanted to have him back, and the life she’d had before his death, The life with plans and dreams and promise. Now, it felt like she was a car stuck in the mud, tires spinning, going nowhere. 

The idea firmly planted, Bambi began to search the internet in earnest for how to summon the dead. She quickly dismissed some of the suggestions as corny and insincere. She didn’t have a Ouija board, and she didn’t know where to buy one. She did most of her shopping at the Shop and Stop, and they didn’t sell them there. It also wasn’t the right season for the Halloween pop-up stores that came and went every fall like twice picked over pumpkin patches. And a crystal ball seemed too outlandish, even in movies, to work in real life.

The idea that finally spoke to Bambi, the one that she felt might actually work, was to try to summon Tommy through a mirror. The site she found that detailed the ritual, spoke of the act in plain words, unadorned with pretense, as if she were a child. As a girl, Bambi had often spent hours gazing at her reflection in mirrors, certain of another world beyond the glass, and so the idea that she could use a mirror to reach out to the boy he had been or the girl she used to be struck a note in her in a pure, elemental way. 

The first steps on the page instructed her to quiet her thoughts. This was easier said than done. So many things were racing through her mind, thoughts of TJ and Tommy and what her life had become and what it could have been if only her Dad hadn’t blown her college money at back alley Bingo halls and on gas station slot machines, drinking down his demons. She tried to turn her attention back to the thought of communing with Tommy. Next, the site said she should think about the person she wanted to talk to and picture that person in her mind. Bambi tried, but, after so long, how clear were her memories of Tommy? Of her life before this disappointing one with TJ? To picture Tommy, Bambi realized that she needed to picture herself then. She could clearly see herself walking around with black eye shadow, black nail polish, deep red lipstick, and a T-shirt printed with a hooded skull. You would think if Bambi was going to learn to summon the dead it would have been then, back when she had split dyed her hair white and black. Tommy had complimented her on the look. “Bambi,” he’d said, “you look so pretty.” Bambi had blown off the compliment with a crisp “thanks, I guess,” while she’d tried to stifle a smile. Inwardly, she had wondered if Tommy liked her. There had been that one time when they had been smoking weed in the cemetery when the cops had come and kicked them out with a warning, when they had been on the verge of something. But all they’d done was hard kiss, and afterward she had felt excited wanting something more to happen but also scared and glad that nothing did. They felt right together the way they were, in that moment, and she didn’t want to risk that for anything. So instead of fooling around with Tommy, Bambi experimented with other boys. She lost her virginity to some drummer in the woods behind the now-dead mall where everyone went to drink. Bambi hadn’t been drunk but acted like she was. It had been disappointing, that first time, over within 12 minutes. And Bambi had thought, Wait, that’s it? It was later that she would begin to feel pleasure. 

She had been surprised how well TJ had satisfied her at first, during those early hot nights, when they couldn’t get enough of each other. When they just kissed and lingered and didn’t speak for hours. Bambi wished now that she had memories like that with Tommy. She tried to picture him that night in the cemetery. His hair had been both its natural black and a lunar yellow, a shade he had chosen himself, one his mom thought was too pretty for a boy. She wanted a son who was more jock, less interesting. She had looked right at him after he had proudly dyed his hair and said, “Well, ain’t you something special?” and Bambi had felt the sudden urge to slap her in the face. Instead, she had quickly excused herself and left. Bambi had her own shitty parents to deal with, her gambling addict dad and her passive, complacent mom. Now, Bambi wished she had stayed. She wished that she had yelled, “He is special, more special than you will ever be.” Even to this day, Bambi couldn’t escape the memory of her cruelty. Tommy’s mom came to the Shop and Stop every week without fail. She looked perpetually washed out and lumpy, like a worn out husk of a pillow. Bambi hated the sound of her raspy smoker’s voice joking with the women in the home goods department, wheezing and laughing without a care. Suddenly, the image that came most clearly to mind was Tommy looking sad and stunned, and it was that image that Bambi held there. 

The instructions told her that now she needed to look at herself in the mirror and imagine the image of Tommy there too. At first, Bambi saw nothing other than her chubby face and combination skin. She wished it was thinner and smoother. Then slowly she saw a younger version of herself, the one with the industrial band T-shirt and black painted eyes. Transposed on top of that, was Tommy. It was just a still image at first, and then it moved. The article said she should now ask the image questions. 

She said the first thing that came to her mind, “Why are you dead, why? What happened?” Bambi waited, hoping. She expected that nothing would happen, and, at first, nothing did. But then Tommy’s image spoke, “My mother’s boyfriend burned me to death because he thought I was gay. After he did, he left town and disappeared. I think she knew it was him, but she didn’t tell the police, and they didn’t try to track him down.” 

Bambi felt her breath catch, tears stinging her eyes. 

“Why can’t you let me rest in peace?” he asked. 

“Are you,” she asked, letting the words hold the space between them “at peace?”

He paused for a moment, his next words hanging on the surface of the mirror waiting to leave and meet hers. “No. I’m not.”

A long, quiet moment passed between them. Bambi examined him. He both resembled the boy she had remembered and didn’t. As she looked closer, his eyes were bloodshot and his skin was burned. The reality of who he was when he left this life becoming clear, overtaking the memory version she had conjured.  

“What do you do,” she asked, “now that you’re dead?”

“Nothing really,” he said. “I haunt people sometimes.” 

“Why didn’t you haunt me ever?” she blurted out, hearing herself plead, in a pitched whiny voice. 

“Most people don’t ask for that,” he said. 

“Could you do it now?” 

“Yeah,” he said, “sure, I could also possess you, if you want.” 

Her voice caught in her throat, “Okay,” she forced herself to say, “that would be cool. Um, how exactly does that work?”

“You need to ask me to enter your body and take it over,” he said.

“Will you enter my body?” Bambi asked.

“I will.” Tommy replied.

Bambi was terrified; the possibilities of what might come next were too powerful to grasp, but she pushed forward anyway. Tommy reached out, and without words told her what to do. She tried her best to follow his lead, but something was wrong. She felt his spirit beginning to enter her, a sensation like nothing she’d felt before or would feel again. It was filled with so much anger, so much pain and sadness, that she involuntarily pushed him away, unable to help herself in the moment. His spirit vanished then, unable to possess her. There was something like her limbs fighting against themselves, and a feeling of all the air being pulled out of her lungs, then nothing. And, then she was left with the mirror and the darkness, and nothing more. Her heart pounded in her chest and in her ears. Frantic, she called out for Tommy, begging him to come back, but she was utterly alone. 

Unknown minutes passed. She called his name again. She punched the mirror. She felt herself bleeding. She punched the mirror again. 

Later, when TJ came home, he found her in front of the cracked glass, blood still slowly dripping down her hand. 

“Hey,” he said, his voice thick with fear and alcohol, “What happened here, Bambi? What’s wrong?” 

“You’re cheating on me again,” she said matter-of-factly. 

“Bambi,” TJ said, “we have to stop the bleeding.” TJ went to look for something while she sat staring at the broken mirror. TJ returned with a white towel and applied the pressure to her hand. She watched her blood stain it. 

“Bambi, say something.”

She was quiet. She knew she wouldn’t tell him what she’d done, what she’d tried, how her courage had failed her. 

“How’s Casey?” she finally said. 

“I’m sorry. I love you.” 

She didn’t say it back. 

TJ was still applying pressure to her hand, just hard enough, though she knew the bleeding had stopped. He tried to wipe her tears away. This was his attempt at being tender. 

“Don’t,” she said. 

He kissed her on the forehead. 

“Stop,” she told him, closing her eyes. She was thinking of Tommy. She was thinking of her younger self. She was thinking about how terrible that rush of anger from Tommy had been, and how she had resisted it because she was afraid.

Now, TJ was asking her if she was okay. This was her cue to say, “Yeah, I’m okay, it’s okay,” and to forgive him as if she was mothering a child. 

Instead, she said, “No, I’m not okay,” and then she went downstairs and slept on the couch.

In the morning, before TJ woke in the comforting morning darkness, Bambi got out her weed and rolled a joint. She put it in her pocket and walked the five miles to the cemetery.  She didn’t take it to Tommy’s grave, but rather to the place that could have been, should have been special. And it would have been in another universe or another life. 

She lit the joint and took a puff and then she held it to the air, to the cosmos, to the boy who was gone. 

“Tommy,” she said, “this one’s for you.”